James Bovard Quotes

Tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. 'Choice' is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

The suppression of the Socialist press has actually been more rapid and efficient in this republic than it was in the German Empire after the declaration of war. And as for our celebrated Anglo-Saxon tradition of free speech—you can’t even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage!

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

The exercise of politics is criminalized in Venezuela.

History's lesson, of course, is that attempts to suppress free expression have merely confirmed the caricaturists' original critique of heavy-handed and objectionable actions of overreaching governments.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

I don't see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Most politicians aren't allowed to express themselves any more.

Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

The ministry of interior may censor newspapers and ban them if they include anything that violates public security, threatens national unity, or contradicts Islam.

The greatest threat to our freedom is an all powerful federal government.

My government will protect all liberties but one—the liberty to do away with other liberties.

It is a crime now in my country to talk about the government's crimes.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

... too Orwellian to contemplate, they've gone way too far.

A threat to national security which has to be silenced

Every stupid policeman, fanatical judge, or moralist for revenue, can successfully abridge freedom of speech by the lawless use of power, and the hysterical mob of pretending lovers of liberty and democracy will stand by an applaud, --so low have we fallen since our American Constitutions were written. We see how the very essence of tyranny thrives under the forms of democracy

The Iranian government advocates free speech... but there's no freedom after you've spoken

During Wilson’s presidency, he followed through on an expansive view of Presidential power, suppressing domestic dissent and subversion in a manner that exceeded Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams.